A few good pies. About as good as we can expect nowadays.

For those of us who like the face and hair combo this was probably the best episode in several months.

The only down note was Barbara (the women's captain) walking away clean. The girl is Harry fukkin Houdini. I don't know how she escapes every week.

Ah, a return to the kind of shit-show we used to get weekly from CM. [RANT TO FOLLOW. SORRY.] To wit:

--Most comprehensive pieing of the day (by a longshot): The guys destroying one of their own teammates because.... BAHAHA! FUNNY GUYZ!!! (Of course there was tons of aftermath there.)
--Second-most aftermath (by a longshot): Guy double pied, and then interviewed after. You know, the way they used to do with the girls... before they fired the male host who did it, and decided pied females weren't "funny" on camera.
--Best summation of this show (in a nutshell): Cute girl gets the "double pie." First guy does weak-ass hit. Second guy does what looks like a great hit, and.... Camera cuts away with the plate still on her face. Slo-mo replays shows.... A slow-motion plate stuck to her face, with the same zero aftermath. (Immediately followed by the guy who got triple-pied by his own team, with tons of aftermath.)

--Best example of why Barb SHOULD be getting destroyed every week (but never will): In one of many double pieings that she "assisted," the guy got an OK first hit from the other girl... But then got the rest of the pie smeared AGAIN (as if Barb was saying, "Don't be like these pussy dudes and let him off easy").... Then Barb just COVERED him with the second one. Once again, a better pieing than anything the guys managed to do. (To women, anyway.)

SO. There were a handful of good female pieings, mostly towards the end when the guys realized they wouldn't be fired if they covered more than 15% of a girl's face with pie. One pretty good double pieing. One guy did a "Token-esque" pieing better than Token (who was subpar throughout).
And there was a "SUPER TORTA" which looked like it would be amazing (3X the size of a normal pie), but because the guy was a giant pussy (see the trend?), it wound up just being a better-than-average hit. So I'm thinking, "Well, even a gentle hit with the Super Torta still covers the entire face because of the size..." And then an even bigger pussy manages to give another girl ANOTHER Super Torta and cover.... Just her nose and chin?!?!
That was the episode in a nutshell: Lots of potential (finally), most of it wasted.

Only positive is this is a step in the right direction IF the trend of "more and bigger pies" continues. CM only got good for female pieings after weeks of the guys getting destroyed first. I assume it took that long before their behind-the-scenes protests resulted in something resembling equal pies. Unfortunately, Token appears to be the only guy with any balls in this cast, and even he gets neutered most weeks.

I truly don't understand why the women don't have Barb as captain every single week (instead of just every other week). Her contract specifies that she can't get any mess, so by default the women have to win every week she's captain. And because she has no fear of repercussion, she is far-and-away the best pie-r on this show by several orders of magnitude.
Combine her with Ana and Julia, and the women haven't lost in 2 months (and none of the 3 vets has been pied yet, aside from Ana getting a dab on her nose). They won't lose again unless they have a newbie as captain (since she won't have the clout to ask to stay clean) or bring back Dani (the one female vet who the producers have no trouble abusing).



Someone in Brazil start a new show already.

** I assume the guy was pied by his teammates because it was his birthday. The camera was on him for a long time because he just stepped to the podium and hadn't yet taken his question. You can rest assured that such a confluence events will never happen to any of the women.

** Barbara does this stealthy thing to conceal her malevolent intentions when she throws a pie. She brings the pie to within an inch of the guy's face pretending to be gentle. Then she slams the pie forward with great force (if you don't pay attention you don't see it). Kind of like Bruce Lee's one inch punch. It doesn't appear to be much but it is. I'm surprised she hasn't broken a nose. Barbara also does another sly thing. She squeezes the pie plate like a taco shell on the guy's face. This ensures that the pie adheres. I haven't seen anyone do this as blatantly before.

** The giant pie is unwieldy. In order to maximize its potential you'd almost have to wrap it around someone's head. I'm sure that the women will have no problem doing so when given the opportunity. The men were afraid of appearing brutish so they didn't.

** There were more double-pies this episode and the giant pie reemerged. This leads me to believe that the producers realize that the current pies are too slim. This could be a good development.

** This episode had four black people. A record. Next week they may have five. Ruda ("Token") is no longer a token. I think they're trying to make the show more accurately reflect their audience.

It was amazing how white the cast of this Brazilian show was for years, yes.

The last (only?) girl to actually get pie smothered on her birthday was Julia 1.0. Amazing how hard the show has dropped since then. Julia practically cries if a pie comes near her now. (And of course no woman has EVER been pied by their own teammates in the history of this show.)

Anyway. If the tradeoff for the number and consistency of pies to actually MATTER... is the guys turning into idiots who get pied at a 3-to-1 ratio... Then okay. I mean, it was annoying as hell for the first two years of CM, but at least you could edit out a worthwhile 3-10 minutes per show. The last five episodes I've deleted immediately after watching, which never used to happen.
The formula is always guys get it WAY worse than girls, so the guys have to start looking like they've been dunked in frosting at the end of the show before the women finally get really messy. (Still don't think Barb will ever get pied again tho.)

You really can't compare the show we watch today to the show that we used to watch. I consider an episode where there are 2 decent pies to be a great episode now.

Once. When Nadia (?)returned after fleeing the set to escape a pie the previous week, the woman who took her place getting pied was allowed to pie her back. But it was actually a double pieing performed with one of the guys.